


Flow

by second_skin



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anthea Writes, Artistic Sensibilities, Character Study, Keeping Secrets from Greg, M/M, Mycroft is Crafty, Mycroft-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:10:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/second_skin/pseuds/second_skin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  </p><div class="center"><em>"During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time.<br/>When I am done, I return to both feeling restored."<br/>--David Rakoff</em></div>
<p></p>
            </blockquote>





	Flow

**Author's Note:**

> _Written for turante, who makes things. Betaed by bwblack and fengirl88._  
>  This story is a riff on the work of three other writers: David Rakoff, who writes in _Don’t Get Too Comfortable_ about his need to make things and the concept of “flow” as described by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi; fyria_yiries, whose story [Bonheurs Enfantins Trop Vite Oubliés Effacés](http://sherlockbbc.livejournal.com/1273380.html) introduced me to the the idea of Mycroft as toymaker; and fengirl88, who discusses Lestrade’s father’s artistic streak in [Love Letters.](http://fengirl88.livejournal.com/45838.html)

Mycroft trusts Greg with all his secrets. All except one. The one he isn't sure the Inspector will understand. Sometimes he doesn't understand it himself. This secret is so much a part of him-- defines him as much as his love for Greg and devotion to Queen and country define him. And if Greg can't understand or finds it all just too strange or amusing . . . well, Mycroft doesn't want to think about that possibility.

 

When Greg brings out his collection of cards and papers and sets them in front of Mycroft, his heart begins thrumming. Mycroft recognizes the old-fashioned art form right away. There seem to be more than four dozen intricate--masterful, one might say--flower collages. Some are simple: just a scattering of pressed violets on a faded yellow backdrop. A few are whimsical: the petals of pansies and daisies, fern stems and bits of bark and seeds arranged to depict swimming fish or dancing people. Each collage is different. Each shows attention to the blending of colours and shapes. And each reveals the passion of the person who made them. That person, Greg says, was his father. The father Greg never knew, but who created these love offerings for Greg's mother.

She rarely spoke about the man who left her with these artifacts, an infant son, and little else. But clearly she harboured some lingering affection for him. She had, after all, kept the pictures safe and in pristine condition until the day she died.

"I'm so glad you unearthed these," ventured Mycroft. "What do you think of them? Your father seems to have had quite a great talent."

"Yeah. I guess he did. They're pretty good, aren't they? And there are so many of them. Looks like he got a bit obsessed with making them, don't youthink?"

"Obsessed? Perhaps. Yes," agreed Mycroft. He couldn't quite tell whether Greg was troubled by the "obsession" bit or not. "They show a lot of skilland patience . . . "

"Oh, yeah. I can see that. I was always rubbish at drawing and painting and the like in school. Really something I admire in other people, though. Mum did say my dad was artistic--preferred making things like this to holding down a proper job, she said. Still, it's important, isn't it? For some people. To have a way of expressing themselves and what not?"

"Yes. It's very important. For some people," answered Mycroft warily. He thought perhaps this was a good time to tell Greg. But for the next few hours they were side-by-side on the sofa, discussing what Greg knew and didn't know about his father and his parents' brief time together. Then they were suddenly drifting toward sleep and dreams. Mycroft thought it best not to marr this rare evening together without calls from the Yard or a summons from Downing Street. He'd hold onto his secret just a little longer.

* * * * *

The world is divided, more or less, into the followers of three great religions: those who do not make things; those who make things for profit or mental distraction; and those who make things because they _must_ make things. The majority of the world's politicians and stockbrokers are adherents of the first faith. Most of the rest of the population claims membership in the second. And a few passionate souls follow the third path, walking silently among us with talismans stashed in handbags and pockets: x-acto knives; coloured pencils, spray adhesive; and for the most devoted, vials of blessed polyurethane.

Mycroft Holmes _must_ make things.

Mycroft's particular compulsion is to make clever and beautiful things forchildren. He heeded the call at the age of nine, when he realized that he could calm his own racing mind and nervous heart and also amuse his precocious little brother by putting his hands to work.

Mycroft created kinetic wire sculptures of spaceships and airplanes. He folded paper into colourful horses, foxes, elephants, and lions; then moved on to folding giant dragons and centaurs. He made sailboats and swords of balsa wood. He made a Druid village and a Mayan temple under Sherlock's bed. He fashioned small and large mechanical contraptions for capturing bugs, birds, and rabbits in the park--until he realized that Sherlock didn't simply want to examine the creatures they captured; he wanted to dissect and mount each victim too. So Mycroft, at the age of eleven, learned to say no to Sherlock. And Sherlock, at age four, perfected his sulk.

In his teens and twenties, Mycroft was a lapsed crafter, for the faith was persecuted at both his boarding school (populated by Anglicans and atheists) and his university (full of future politicians, bankers, and a lonely handful of closeted knitters). Soon he was consumed with moving forward in his career, solidifying alliances, mastering Russian, Hungarian, and Mandarin. He became exacting and cruel towards his subordinates--that is, virtually everyone. He rarely saw his brother, from whom he had become estranged. They no longer understood each other. And more to the point, Mycroft no longer had the ability to amuse Sherlock. Sherlock had, by age eighteen, discovered that potions and pills distracted him as well as swords and rabbit-traps once had. And now his only victim was himself.

Mycroft was profoundly unhappy, but didn't know precisely why until late one night, having stayed at the office long after even the cleaners had gone, he found himself compelled to raid the cabinets in which the office supplies were cached. Working through the wee hours until dawn, Mycroft fashioned two dozen mobiles out of paper clips, rubber bands, and multi-coloured post-its scissored into comets, moons, and stars. And as he looked around at the mess and the products of his sleepless night, feeling not exhausted, but thoroughly energized, he finally understood.

Initiating and pre-empting wars, forging treaties and then un dermining those same treaties with his network of spies and counterspies was not enough. No diplomatic victory or black ops success could equal the joy he felt when making something with his own well-manicured hands. So, Mycroft set about renovating the third floor of his London house. He sealed it off with locks and alarms, allowing no one other than himself to enter the space. He told the domestic staff and his professional assistants that this was a secure government communications office. In other words: _Keep Out_.

Today, if anyone is brave enough to venture beyond the enormous steel door, he or she will recognize immediately that this is not a bureaucrat's office suite. It is a workshop to rival St. Nick's.

Metal and glass cabinets hold acrylic, oil,and water-colour paints; brushes fine enough for Persian miniatures and thick enough to plaster a wall; permanent and washable markers; threads and yarns of every hue and texture. Sturdy Scandinavian shelves hold bins of seashells and sea glass; china doll heads; bolts of Japanese, Indonesian, and West African fabrics; antique beads, buttons, and hat pins; plastic dinosaurs, cowboys, Indians, and infantrymen. Large boxes in each corner hold copper and aluminum wire, wooden dowels, spheres, cones, and cubes of every size; and one enormous clear plastic box in the center of the room, next to the massive pine worktable, holds at least 5,000 pieces of Lego in every primary, secondary, and tertiary colour.

Mycroft is not one of those "art for art's sake" types. He wants his creations to be useful, wants someone to love and appreciate them. On his personal laptop he keeps a database of schools, hospitals, and orphanages around the globe, to which he pays visits, slipping away during diplomatic missions (often in elaborate disguises, but never without his umbrella), to determine what sorts of things might be most amusing and delightful for the children who live there. He uses the many nights when Greg is roving the city with Sherlock to make marionettes, cardboard Camelots, and all manner of other surprises to be sent off in the post anonymously.

Mycroft and Sherlock are still--according to Sherlock--estranged, or more accurately, they are _arch enemies_. But Mycroft now understands that Sherlock is subject to even more overpowering needs than his. His brother has given up potions and pills in favor of microscopes and mysteries, but the degree of compulsion is the same. Sherlock _must_ make elegant solutions out of scraps of fabric, blood, and soil samples. And whenever he can't be immersed in his craft, losing track of time and self, Sherlock experiences depression and anxiety more brutal than Mycroft has ever felt.

Mycroft can't offer Sherlock toys, of course, but now and then attempts to provide a puzzle or a code or a crime to amuse his brother. And he thanks the gods daily for Greg Lestrade, who keeps Sherlock well-supplied with victims now.

* * * * *

In early March each year, Mycroft focuses attention on one of his favorite and most time-consuming crafts: Easter eggs in the Ukrainian style, _pysanky_. His eggs are decorated with intricate geometrical shapes, in deep jewel tones, coated with varnish, and then cut in halves and hinged so that they open to reveal tiny paper rabbits and ducklings inside. This year, for the first time, Mycroft enlists an accomplice in his project. At last he has someone with whom to share his passion.

* * * * *

Mycroft had discovered that Anthea was a fellow traveler soon after he hired her as his PA. From their first interview, he felt a special affinity for the beautiful young woman. She never said more than was called for, let her eyes and eloquent body language convey her thoughts. She had a grasp of international monetary policy and Realpolitik to rival his own. She spoke Arabic and Farsi fluently, as well as the usual Romance languages. And she had as keen a sweet tooth as her boss. An ideal CV.

But it was their similar artistic obsessions that finally bound them so tightly together. Anthea did not sculpt or paint or fold or carve. She was not driven to pursue the visual arts, but instead was compelled to write--poems, fairy tales, and short stories. As soon as Mycroft suspected what Anthea was up to, he studied her intensely--for almost three years--wondering if he should reveal his secret to her. He thumbed through her notebooks and scanned her online journal when she was running his errands. Via CCTV, he watched her writing early each morning at the coffee shop near her flat.

Like Mycroft, Anthea performed her duties a notch above perfectly and never let her writing interfere with work, of course. But whenever she had even three or four minutes to pause--often while riding to and from appointments in the car or waiting patiently for Mycroft to finish an interrogation--she pulled out her smart phone and jotted notes or composed couplets and haiku. She wrote first lines for short character studies or outlined a new plot for a novella. A keen observer--that was the real reason Mycroft had hired her--she frequently let her eyes wander as she walked through the park or rode the bus, noticing the expression on a businessman's face or the cut of a young girl's skirt, collecting it all like Mycroft collected his seashells and paintbrushes.

Mycroft had never seen anyone so oblivious to the surrounding world while in the midst of making things--and he was fascinated. Did _he_ get that dazed, blissful look too, he wondered.

Now, a few weeks before Easter, Mycroft and Anthea sat together for hours up in the locked-and-sealed third floor room. Mycroft worked on his _pysanky_ with a kitska, dyes, and beeswax. And for each of the six dozen eggs, Anthea wrote a four-line poem to tuck inside. At times, when fully immersed in the rapture of making, neither Mycroft nor Anthea spoke for hours, and ultimately, to their chagrin, had to set a series of alarms to interrupt them--making sure they didn't remain in the vault-like workroom indefinitely.

* * * * *

Greg looked up from his plate of eggs and toast to see Anthea sneaking out the front door, still in yesterday's smart skirt and blouse, hair and makeup a bit worse for wear, carrying her red patent leather pumps. He heard Mycroft in the shower, then heard him moving efficiently through the usual morning dressing routine.

 _Still so many damned buttons_ , thought Greg ruefully.

When Mycroft finally appeared in the kitchen to prepare his own tea and toast, Greg wore a scowl. "Some men would be jealous, Mycroft."

"Jealous? What are you talking about?"

"You and Anthea--up all night-- _again_ \--and always whispering and giggling together lately. I think I deserve an explanation for this--or at least permission to see that inner sanctum of yours, and make sure it's not some sleazy love nest."

Mycroft paused, mouth slightly agape. Greg was joking, surely. Yes, of course, he must be joking. But perhaps this was the right time to show him. Yes, why not. Mycoft said a quick, heartfelt prayer that this would not be the final straw--the final Holmes idiosyncrasy that would lead D. I. Lestrade to run screaming out the door.

"Put down the jam and come with me."

Mycroft breathed deeply and opened the steel door slowly, revealing his lair.Greg gasped, of course, at the sheer volume of bits and baubles, ran his fingers over the eggs that were set out on the table in various stages of completion, chuckled at the Darth Vader figurine peeking out amidst the Lego blocks.

Mycroft took a few minutes to explain and demonstrate a marionette--a circus clown that bore a striking resemblance to Greg. Rambled a bit about absence of time and self. Admitted that he really _couldn't_ stop doing this without experiencing symptoms of withdrawal and psychic damage. Mentioned that he and Anthea were now partners in obsession. Then he breathed deeply again, strode over to sift nervously through his bins of buttons, and waited for Greg's reply.

Greg glanced around the room again, shaking his head, looking slightly perplexed. Then he sat down on one of the metal stools arranged on either side of the worktable and grinned. He motioned for Mycroft to come nearer.

"Can I watch you make some of this stuff, My? I always knew you had clever hands, but never thought they were quite this clever."

Mycroft blushed and laughed, slipping off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. He pressed his lips to Greg's in a warm, grateful kiss.

As Mycroft was pulling away and reaching for a brush, Greg stopped him and held him close, nuzzling a still pink cheek, and whispering, "You smell like varnish and vinegar, you know."

"Get used to it, Inspector," Mycroft answered, positioning himself just so between Greg's thighs, feeling sweet, raspberry-jam breath on his face and strong hands--skillful in their own special way--sliding around his waist.

Perhaps the _pysanky_ could wait.

 


End file.
